The USPS Emailed Me Collage Material

The USPS offered a service a few years back. You sign up, and you get an email with rough scans of the mail that’s coming for that day. Not all the mail, it rarely scans anything larger than a letter. Getting the daily mail spoiled for me while doing my chores isn’t great, but it’s also a slight benefit. So much of my time is spent scanning work and ephemera, so having a robot do it for me feels like a nice treat. It’s like I have an assistant. Can I get a mail-art assistant?

Since signing up, I have received these emails daily and downloaded each scan into a folder on my computer. That’s thousands of scans…thousands. Normally I do them in groups of two or three because it’s a tedious process, one that I’ve continued to do for years without any justification for doing so. Day in and day out, I check my email, download the scans, and then do nothing with the images produced. More than once, I’ve questioned why I haven’t done anything with the images and almost stopped collecting them. I pushed through.

They’re not good images. Their quality isn’t easily usable. The files are tiny. You can’t print them as is, anything you need intense detail for, you scan in the conventional sense.

I collected images in this fashion until January 2026 when I started to use them. It was all so simple, like most things. A whim produces a nice result and then a whim turns into an obsession. It was simple, all I had to do was bring up the images and digitally cut out (this means I can do it at work during my downtime, like this piece of useless writing) what I thought was interesting and then post that to a bigger piece. I started with Cohen’s braincells in mind. Little images to create a bigger story.  

The first thing I did was play around with a bunch of Richard C. images, just the front of the envelopes, just what I receive in the daily email. For him, the front of the envelopes contains so much of the work. On the envelopes you can see his unique style which has been honed after decades of making mail art. I put them together in a larger digital collage. After that, I broke some of his often-used motifs into a type of visual glossary. I cut out a bunch of the elements that make up his work, and I gave them a name. I picked the items that I admired most about his work, the most unique, the most striking. 

Richard C. Visual Glossary 

10 Envelopes Digitally Collaged 

 

As these things go, you do the thing repeatedly to see what you can learn from repetition. I went through my list of over 800 digital scans direct from the USPS and picked out things that stuck out to me and then dropped those into another creation. This could go on forever. A new toy to play with. While I started with Cohen in mind, I’m thinking about moving more towards Klaus Voorman’s Revolver cover. 

Can you find yourself?

 

 

Flyleaves Are My Flygirls: Making Rotting Paper Dance

New paper has little personality. There’s something uninteresting about a pristine piece of paper. It’s like a face without any discernible scars. There’s no life to a brand-new piece of paper. No story. No history.

Ever since I started making collages in a pop-Schwitters style (just thought of that, seems on point) I’ve looked out for old pieces of paper. When everyone has access to the same materials the creations end up looking similar. I’m not a collage maker that does intricate cuts or peculiar shapes; I mostly work with rectangles or squares where all the images touch one another. For me, making collages like this, with new and vibrant paper, the senses get overloaded. Too many new colors make the collage look like a high school project. You know, one of those ice breaker activities meant to introduce someone’s animated personality. Look, over there is Kelly Kopawski and beside her is an image of my favorite chip, Pizzarias.

Over time I’ve focused on flyleaves. Flyleaves (also called front-free-endpages) are the blank pages of a book that normally come directly before a title page. I find my flyleaves in the giant free bins at my local bookstore. I go there every week and tear out the flyleaves, as many as I possibly can. Sometimes you get two or three “blank” pages with every book since they’re at the start and at the end. I take the pages I want and toss the rest of the book back into the bin. Catch and release. Since I’m not really looking for content, it doesn’t matter what the focus of the book is. I simply dig around for books that look old. The condition is unimportant too. Because I’m looking for discarded trash, I can leave the bookstore with twenty or more pages that’s eventually going to end up in a landfill or a hoarder’s paradise if I don’t take them. Flyleaves from long forgotten 19^th century novels, weird encyclopedias, and hate-filled religious texts end up walking out the doors with me.

Time is what makes these pages unique.

There’s something beautiful about a book that has been in a poorly ventilated basement for fifty years, a book riddled with water damage, a book that held up the end of a cheap couch since Eisenhower was in office. The pages have dents and ruts and rot and mold. Art supply stores seem leery of mold and rot and that weird smell that old books get. If it doesn’t smell, I don’t want it. They always smell. My car smells. If the good people at Jovan Musk started making a fragrance called bibliosmia, I’d buy it.

Although almost all these pages start out white, time changes them in unique ways. Some paper is thicker than others which causes unique changes compared to very thin, newspaper-like papers. Things yellow in different ways and at different intervals. Texture is important. Paper from books printed in other countries will have a different feeling than from cheap books published in the US. There are bumps in paper and cuts. Whenever I finish a collage, I go over it with sandpaper. Doing this brings the composition together. All that paper mixed and cut and reassembled, some from a book published in 1897, some from Soviet-era guidebook, and some from cheap pulp novels, react in contrast to one another. The paper is essentially the same color, but on closer inspection there are tiny inconsistencies that come out. If you’re willing to look closely, you can see how all of it clashes into a new thing.

Can you smell it?

I’ve broken the most common types of flyleaves into four different categories. I did this for you.

Blank

The most common type of flyleaves are the blank ones. These are the ones that people have not really touched. They have the least personality but make up the bulk of the pages I rip from books. Although blank, that does not mean the paper hasn’t picked up a lot of “personality” from the time it was first printed. Oxidation is key. 

  

Distressed

This one is my favorite. Distressed flyleaves are truly the most idiosyncratic of them all. Look at this page, right here, there’s a long strip of yellowing on the right side. This takes time, decades and with little interference from other people. You can’t buy this piece of paper new. Dead center, both at the bottom and at the top, you can see where a piece of tape has corroded the page. Paper clips are also common, so are pieces of cut-out bits that have been stuck inside as a bookmark. When the piece of paper sits in there for decades, it makes a permanent impression on the paper. 

 

Scribbles

Scribbles are most found in textbooks or books that kids like to mess around with. Kids draw in books, they make notes, and so often they practice writing their names. There are more than a few textbooks I’ve found filled with long lists of a child’s name slightly different from the example above. It’s like they’re practicing signing autographs at an awards show. Scribbles done in pencil always look the best. Over time the marks smudge, and move, giving the handwriting a ghostly quality. 

 

Library

Although libraries purport to care the most about books, you can always tell a library book from a non-library book. Libraries like dropping in fun little stickers with the name of the library or the type of book, or those ugly barcodes. Often these books are discarded and sold at library sales, a major source of my joy. I always pull out any page that has the word “DISCARD” on it. Sometimes this is written and sometimes it’s rubberstamped. Sometimes you get “WITHDRAWN”, but I don’t like that word as much, too long. None of these marks matter when compared to best of library defacement, the “DUE BACK” stamp. Nothing is more beautiful than this. I can look at these all day long, whether they’re lovingly rendered in a straight line or presented sloppily like they are here. Whenever I get a beautiful due back page, I always look at the dates to see how loved the book was. This one was loved. 

 

Find, rip, cut, reassemble, mail.

The Year in Postage

There are two things constant with mail-art, you’re required to worship Ray Johnson, and you’re expected to comment on postage prices. The first I’m not so great and heeding, but the second I find myself doing more and more. Ten years ago, I complained about postage prices. Fifteen years ago, I complained about postage prices. Now, I’m complaining about postage prices! Just last week, when I left the post office, I looked at my total and winced. It was too much. I need to get rid of the things I make and since no one wants them, I have to mail them to unsuspecting victims. The higher postage goes the more crap I have in my house. 

 

No one talks about the rather genius decision for the “forever stamp.” I think it’s genius, I guess. Whoever came up with the Allen Toussaint stamp this year, thank you. He’s a hero of mine and I’ve bought this stamp over and over again. Anyway, having one consistent value while preparing envelopes makes it easier on senders, even if that isn’t as visually pleasing as having a whole envelope full of random stamps. It takes the math out of sending mail. It might have killed the overall usage of the one cent, five cent, and ten sent stamps, but move quicker through putting things together. As much as I love anything that takes math out of the equation, I love more than that they moved to stickers. Come on, what a no-brainer. I have no romantic associate with licking stamps. If they have flavored them, I might be more interested in licking them, but they never added grape, or bubble gum to the mix.

A quick google shows that in 2014 a stamp was $0.49. That seems low, very low. I’m sure it was very high, super high, to the people of 2014. Of course, I was making and sending mail art during that time, so I was for sure complaining about the prices. Stuff like, “If these prices get any higher, I’m going to significantly limit what I mail!” I’m sure I said it with anger, thunderous anger.

Just a little comparison. In the EU, a stamp costs between 1 euro and 1.9 euro. (I’m not looking for the euro symbol on my keyboard) Domestic EU rates change from country to country, and from which country you’re sending it to. Currently, a $0.78 cent domestic stamp in the US, would be .67 euro. In other words, US stamps are cheaper than those in Europe, if you’re sending them in-country. In Japan, it costs 110 to send a domestic letter, or 0.70 cents. It is a bit cheaper there, but not by much. In other words, we shouldn’t complain as much as we do. I mean we’re going to complain, but we should do it proportionately. This is too much math.

The US price of international shipping of packages is ridiculous. Cheeto Hitler did a number on those rates months ago as we inch closer to dismantling the postal system altogether. I’m sure Amazon will be running it before he drools into oblivion. When you buy a presidency, you have to get something in return, that’s just business. Unfortunately, sending anything internationally that isn’t completely flat, completely paper, is off limits. When I first started sending things, it was a luxury to mail something of strange proportions out of the country, but it wasn’t completely off limits.

So…how much am I helping to keep the USPS afloat? A quick search of my finances, and it seems like a lot, especially for a hobby. While I occasionally send them to friends and sometimes sell things online, the overwhelming amount I spend is on postage. It’s on stamps and metered mail envelopes filled with my shenanigans. 

 

I mostly go to one post office in Lexington N.C., and before I go and see my mom on Wednesdays. In a pinch I’ll go to the post office in downtown Winston-Salem, on in Mocksville if I’m teaching over there. I go to the Lexington branch because it’s convenient and people tend to know me. This is important because it’s harder for them to get a few extra pennies out of you, something that can easily be done if you’re not paying attention. Unfortunately, the lady I liked the most, has retired. She had a sense of humor and would ask about the stickers and stamps on the front of envelopes. The newer folks have little personality. The lady in charge seems to be not only working there, but existing in the world. Another lady cheated me out of a couple of dollars this past summer and wouldn’t fess up to it. If she hadn’t brought up the issue with her boss, the dead inside lady, I would have never ratted her out. It was fine. I like the younger guy with the braids; he has a bounce.

I spent roughly $1434.24 on postage in 2025.

Maybe I should complain more.

That’s 1838.76 stamps.

That’s about $119.52 every month. That’s about $29.88 every week.

I could probably buy a used Kia for that sort of money. If I were inclined and assumed that this would be the typical amount every year, for about ten years, I could buy a decent used Kia.

Although I’ve made jokes that I’m looking for a mid-life crisis, this one might be it. No getting into motorcycles or extreme mountain climbing, just postage. Just a consistent movement of paper around the world to mark that one day I will die. While sending off mail might be dangerous in some places, (part of the appeal of such a crisis) where I normally go, things are pretty quiet. I’ve heard some arguments in that building, but nothing that I would consider life threatening. The lady that’s dead inside is well…dead inside, but the guy with the braids is always cool.